In the winter evenings, after the choir, the musician and Gabriel took refuge in this little room.  The canons, wishing to avoid the cold winds and the rain, took their daily walk in the galleries of the upper cloister, not wishing to forego this exercise to which their methodical existence had accustomed them.  The rain would beat on the window of the little room, and in the dull grey twilight the musician would turn over his portfolios, or letting his hands wander over the harmonium, he would talk the while with Gabriel, who was seated on the bed.

The musician would grow excited, speaking of his love of art.  In the midst of some peroration he would become suddenly silent, and bending over the instrument its melodies would fill the room, and floating down the staircase would reach the ears of the walkers in the cloister like a distant echo.  Suddenly he would cease playing and resume his chattering, as though afraid that with his absent-mindedness his ideas would evaporate.

The silent Luna was the only listener he had met with in the Cathedral; the first who would listen to him for long hours without ridiculing him or thinking him crazy, and who often showed by his short interruptions and questions the pleasure with which he listened.

The end of the evening’s conversation was always the same—­the greatness of Beethoven, the idol of the poor musician.

“I have loved him all my life,” said the Chapel-master, “I was educated by a Jeronomite friar, an old man driven from his convent who, after leaving it, had wandered over the world as a professor of the violoncello.  The Jeronomites were the great musicians of the Church.  You did not know this, neither should I have known it if this holy man had not taken me under his protection soon after I was born, and been to me a real father.  It appears that in olden days each order devoted itself to some special thing.  One, I think the Benedictines, copied and annotated old books; others made sweet liqueurs for the ladies, others were wonderfully clever in training cage birds, and the Jeronomites studied music for seven years, each one playing the instrument of his choice, and to these we owe that there has been preserved in the Spanish churches a little, but very little, good musical taste.  And from what my little father told me, what wonderful orchestras these Jeronomites must have had in their convents!  For the ladies it was a great delight to go on Sunday evenings to the parlour, where they met the good fathers, each one a master of his own particular instrument.  These were the only concerts in those days, and with their pittance assured, and no anxiety as to housing or clothing themselves, and with the love of art as their only duty, you may imagine, Gabriel, what musicians they could become.  For this reason, when the friars were expelled from their convents the Jeronomites were not the worst off.  There was no need to beg masses in the churches or to live on the charity